Thursday, April 2, 2015

Mutants & Marvels: Let’s Roll a Hero

I have a lot
of game systems floating around right now begging for attention….having taken a
look at EGS, I thought I’d move on to another indie title, this one also
steeped in a bit of the superhero corner of the OSR: Mutants & Marvels, a superhero genre RPG which
takes a bit of FASERIP and merges it with the D20 roll-high aesthetic. It works
rather well, and is a lot of game packed into a tiny space.

Rolling up a
character in M&M (hereafter identified as not related to a similar game) is
based on a “rank” purchase mechanic: you have three tiers of play being heroic
(Batman, Daredevil), super heroic (X-Men, Teen Titans) and epic (Superman, Thor).
We’ll stick to super heroic, which give you 25 ranks to spend.

Back in the
day I used to run a lot of superhero game using the old Mayfair MEGS version of
DC Heroes. I have a lot of old character concepts to draw from….I think for
this one I’m going to see what Arbalest can do. Arbalest is Dan Carver, a
former sidekick to Captain Liberty of the Liberty League before they were wiped
out in a concerted attack by the Sinister Seven. One of several “sidekick
survivors” Arbalest took on the mantle of dark vigilante to hunt down the Seven
in revenge for the murder of his mentor, but he eventually realized that he had
strayed from the ethos of his teacher and reformed (this happened during a
major showdown with the Old One which manifested in New York in 1990). Arbalest
eventually began to experience severe deterioration from the Demons’ super
serum which he had stolen and used in 1989, but around 2000 he went on to work
for The Nil Group which repaired the damage to his system in exchange for his
service as an agent. The Nil Group is an ultra-secret espionage outfit designed
to track down and contain dangerous metahumans. While working for them he took
on the role of Agent 13. We’ll see what Arbalest/Agent 13 looks like in
M&M.

M&M has
seven primary stats: fighting, agility, strength, endurance, reason, intuition and
psyche (FASERIP). These rank from -2 (feeble) to +15 (unearthly). You’ve got
titles (like “excellent” for each or you can use numbers (+2 is excellent). A
nice chart lets you figure out where each attribute falls in relation to a
chosen rank.

Arbalest is
a borderline super-human; he was a well-trained normal when he was Captain
Liberty’s sidekick in the 80’s, but he underwent a super-serum treatment which
he stole from the villain called the Demon in 1989 which gave him metahuman
strength and speed. In 2000 when he was recruited by the Nil Group received
further cybernetic augmentations and was exposed to the Lazarus Mist to undo
some of the genetic “unraveling” that the Demons’ super serum was doing to him
physically. This treatment repaired the
damage and extended his life indefinitely—physically he looks 30 even though in
2015 he’s technically 56 years old.

(Can you
tell there’s an entire genre of gaming I love which I haven’t even touched upon
in the last four years of blogging?)

That leaves
9 ranks for powers. Since Arbalest isn’t heavy on unique powers that seems
reasonable….he’s more of a classic grimdark post-Miller Batmanesque type, the
sort of character that would later look comfortable in an early nineties Image
lineup.

Resources
are also tracked on the ability chart like attributes. Although I imagine you
could spend points toward resources, the game suggests that the GM determine
the resources based on the character background. Since the background for
Arbalest/Agent 13 is one of a professional secret agent, we’ll give him Resources
of remarkable (+4; equivalent to a small corporation….this is a super-secret
outfit that skims its funds off of the receipts of the Pentagon, after all!)

Next up are
powers. Power mechanics are very easy (spend ranks to get powers) and some
additional rules include power packages (a way to make iron man’s suit, or
other powers that are linked/grouped together) and power stunts (tricky stuff
that you might be able to do….like Captain America slinging his shield around,
I suppose). Additional rules here include some character origins (why you have
powers) and the ubiquitous sorcery rules, since comics are notorious for making
sorcery and spells very hard to model in RPGs. Finally there are 11 groups of
powers presented, with an additional 25 subtypes.

For Arbalest
we’re looking at some super attributes (technically already added to strength),
and some general physical improvements….he’s got some residual super-serum in
his veins, some cybernetic augmentations which affect regeneration and give him
tougher skin and reflexes. From looking at the list, I see right off that super
attribute will justify his already high strength as I set it, while Damage
Resistant, Armor, Regeneration and Hardened Fists are also good choices. If I
have the points I might add some senses as well, since Nil Group may have
cybernetically augmented his vision and hearing as well.

Here’s what
I go with:

Super Attribute: this justifies his
strength and agility (which according to the chart at remarkable rank he can
lift one ton and has a high natural agility….dodging single bullets).

Armor: after deciding damage resistance
isn’t quite what I want (it seems to be vs. energy types) I opt for Armor excellent
(+3) instead for 2 ranks. He’s basically got what was called “skinweave” in Cyberpunk 2020; nanotech in his skin can
harden up with a carbon fiber weave to absorb shock and impact.

Hardened Fists: I figure that same
nanoweave carbon fiber in his skin that serves as armor also makes his fists
tougher. We’ll give it to him at good (+1) for 1 rank as well, but only because
his main schtick is going to be with the big arbalest he carries around.

Regeneration: the nanotreatment in his
veins also keeps him alive and young. I’ll give him excellent (+2) in this. That costs 2 ranks . We have 4 ranks
left to spend.

I bypass
enhanced senses for a moment and move to skills. Skills include a few specific
rules: you have a series of “everyman” skills which everyone receives at a base
value equal to the character’s Reason score. You can then spend one rank on a
skill to get it at a value equal to the linked attribute plus one. So…in
Arbalest’s case, I can buy Martial Arts, Lethal for one rank and link it to his
Fighting Score, meaning he has a Martial Arts, Lethal at +5.

Right off
the bat he needs training in bows (arbalests) so I jam 1 rank into getting Firearms/Bows
linked to Agility (since it’s a ranged attack) for a +7.

With one
more rank I’ll stick it in Investigation, a skill not on the list provided and
link it to Intuition, so he has Investigation +2. Not great but he needs
something to reflect his role as Nil Group Agent 13.

The skill
list is short: seven everyman skills, and a sampling of seven suggested skills
with the basic rules on making whatever skills would fit your character. The
key thing is each skill has to be linked to an attribute to get its base value
plus 1 per rank spent to improve it.

After all
that, a few additional topics are discussed: secret vs. public identities (Dan
Carver likes to keep his identity secret, but due to a high-profile trial in
the late 80’s leading to his brief incarceration his method of doing so these
days is through numerous obscure aliases). Reputation by popularity and infamy
is addressed as well….as a player I could argue to the GM that Arbalest/Agent
13’s reputation of infamy was from the late 80’s, and Nil Group helped wipe out
much of that….so he could “restart” at zero. But as GM I’d probably assigned a
couple points to Infamy because old stories never die.

Contacts and
minions are also discussed (though not sidekicks curiously). Everyone gets a
contact for free at character creation, so Arbalest gets one: Nil Group. Your
contact is usually normal, but by spending a rank you can make it special…I’ll
leave the exact nature of the Nil Group contact/relationship open…they like it
that way, anyway.

Beyond that
M&M talks about archetypes and identifies eight sample archetypes with some
guidelines on what they do and how to make one, followed by a character
example. One thing that the process
doesn’t really talk about is equipment. You can build equipment using powers,
as suggested in the power packages
discussion section (making Iron Man’s armor) but not a lot of guidance on how
you stat out, say, Batman’s utility belt (although I guess you could define it
as a power package as well). There’s no “omnipower” such as the DC Heroes
system had to fix this problem, as an example. However, the GM section does
include rules on building things in the game (gadgeteering) which are very
simple and boil down to: do you have the time, resources and space? If so then
you can build it. With that spirit in mind, I’m going to give Arbalest his
signature weapon…it’s a heavy crossbow essentially, designed originally for
sieges, but this state-of-the-art edition is easy enough for a guy with
augmented strength and dexterity to haul around. It’s definitely not something
you’d see the Huntress using, though!

The game
stats out bows and firearms but not this weapon, so I’ll make it slightly
better than a bow, worse than a heavy handgun: +3 damage, range 100’, skilled
and lethal traits.

So how does
Arbalest hold up in the wide world of bad guys? Stay tuned for next time, when
we test out the combat mechanics (all two pages) of M&M. This is a very
lite supers system, but honestly I suspect it will be a bit more entertaining
to see how two super humans fare in a battle than the sad massacre that we saw
in EGS previously….!

3 comments:

Thanks for the plug! Sounds like it works out so far. And it's good to note certain elements that seem to be "missing." I'm already working on a revised version, so I will add sidekicks and more equipment rules to the list of things to be added.

No problem! It's a great system...I've got a combat write-up tomorrow, and I do outline some stuff I think combat ought to include guidelines on as well (you'll see....the sample I worked out with my cohorts was fairly bloody LOL)

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